Crisis
What's a crisis? Bottom line: something went wrong. Shit got fucked up. It doesn't matter who started it. It doesn't matter whose fault it was. But billions and billions of fictional characters are going to have to die gruesome, horrible deaths because of it. And it'll probably be cool... if you can understand what's going on. The Multiverse hates you. It just keeps going... Crisis on Multiple Earths !]] So, it all started when the Silver Age, disciples of the Golden Age, had a hot pedophilic affair with their mentors. In the 40's, there was this group of "mystery men" called the [[Justice Society of America|Justice Society of America]] that mostly fought Nazis and other acceptable targets of the time period. But after awhile, they got boring... so the good people at DC dreamed up a whole new group of characters with mostly the same names, called the [[Justice League of America|Justice League of America]]. Apparently, the most rational excuse anybody could think of to have both groups meet was some confusing BS about parallel universes and different vibrational frequencies. Their first meeting was a fight over which universe got to be Earth-One, and which team had to be Earth-Two. The Justice League won, largely because none of them were crotchety old geezers from the forties. After that, both groups became immediate friends because that's the easiest thing to write. Also, there were a bunch of other Earths (an infinite amount, actually), but none of them were really as important. Earth-Three was kind of cool, because everybody there was evil, but their costumes were dumb. Earth-Four had the guys from Charlton Comics, Earth-S had Captain Marvel and his brand of outdated sensibilities, and Earth-C had a bunch of funny animals that acted like the Justice League. Wasn't there something with a Nazi Justice League? That would be cool. Whatever, the list goes on, but we don't have all day. Crisis on Infinite Earths Finally, in 1986, stuff just got too complicated, and it was time for the multiverse to commit a massive, massive suicide. This guy named Pariah was supposed to go around warning people about it, but his useless ass didn't show up until stuff was already happening. Everybody got tired of all of the Earth-Whatever bullshit, and a veritable god took up the monstrous task of making everything less confusing... by telling one of the most confusing stories of all time. Basically, an omnicidal being of unspeakable horror (the Anti-Monitor, not Dan DiDio) wanted to kill everything. The regular Monitor (who had much better publicity) gathered up the heroes of the world(s) to stop him. Anti-Monitor asploded almost all of the Earths, except like five of them, and then he fought literally everybody at the dawn of time. Screwing around in the Big Bang made it so there was only one Earth left, but it was a compromise of everything cool about the other Earths. Did that make sense? Because trying to explain it makes us feel retarded. Superman, crotchety geezer Superman of Earth-Two, whiny brat Superboy-Prime and hip teen idol Alex Luthor teamed up and killed the Anti-Monitor. Dead. Dead! So dead, that he could never come back never, ever, ever again. Well, almost never. Afterwards, everybody and everything existed in the same universe, anybody who was anybody got a cool new origin story, and North and South Dakota were able to resolve their discrepancies to get together for one very magical Thanksgiving. And best of all, nobody would ever have to worry about the Multiverse again. All of the problems with the parallel worlds, and continuity were completely solved and nothing would need to be done to fix them ever again. Okay, we're blatantly lying. But wouldn't that be nice? Zero Hour: Crisis in Time So, 1994 rolls around, and shit, as it almost always is, was still fucked up. The Legion of Super-Heroes had been digging themselves into a deeper hole, there was no clear reason why the Justice Society weren't in nursing homes, and nobody had any idea who Hawkman was. Dan Jurgens, man with a plan(?) put a baseball bat to the jenga tower that was the DC timeline, and then put it back together like legos. Hal Jordan went crazy and became Parallax, and somehow had the ability to destroy everything that ever was or would be. Hank Hall became Extant, and he... helped. The Time Trapper was a good guy for like a month, because it turned out that at that point he was secretly Cosmic Boy, but the whole thing was kind of overwhelming and really... it's best just sweeping it underneath the rug. Infinite Crisis After twenty years of linear storytelling without a multiverse, the completely unpleasable fanbase and its representatives on staff had had enough. Infinite Crisis brought that shit back. Basically, Alex Luthor and Superboy-Prime decided that the world wasn't good enough... so to improve it, they embarked on a massive convoluted plan which involved mass murder and teaming up every supervillain in the universe. Maxwell Lord became evil, and used Checkmate to launch killer OMACs upon everything that was good and holy. Batman's invention to kill superheroes that he happened to have had lying out, Brother Eye, went on a rampage. Rann and Thanagar got into a big fight that somehow shifted the center of the universe away from Oa. The Green Lantern Corps were not amused. Alex Luthor also united every villain ever into one Secret Society functioning as a team. And the Spectre went insane for like the umpteenth time and killed Shazam because his evil counterpart told him. Space blew up, and the Multiverse came back to life. Plus, a whole lotta people got killed, like Superboy! (oh noes!) Superboy-Prime punched reality. As in, the abstract concept. That screwed a bunch of shit up, made a bunch of people come back to life, upset the 31st Century again, and also, retcons, retcons retcons. Then later, Mister Mind ate the boring parts of reality and the multiverse became much cooler. The downside was though, there were like infinity billion annoying new Monitors to deal with. Final Crisis Don't even frigging ask us about it. We don't know, we don't want to talk about it, we were asleep, we weren't listening, we're waiting for it come out on DVD. Go talk to Wikipedia about it, they won't shut up about the damn thing. External Links * Crisis on Infinite Earths at the DC Database * Zero Hour: Crisis in Time at the DC Database * Identity Crisis at the DC Database * Infinite Crisis at the DC Database * Final Crisis at the DC Database *